Souvenir de la Côte d´Azur

Title

Souvenir de la Côte d´Azur

Description

Beautiful album with 36 mounted fotographies of all important views of the Côte d´Azur. Cannes, Nizza, Monte Carlo etc.

ca. 1900

Artist

Anonymus

Historical Description

The Côte d'Azur often known in English as the French Riviera, is the Mediterranean coastline of the southeast corner of France, also including the state of Monaco. Until the end of the 18th century, the area later known as the Côte d'Azur was a remote and impoverished region, known mostly for fishing, olive groves and the production of flowers for perfume manufactured in Grasse. A new phase of the Côte d'Azur began when the coast became a fashionable health resort for the British upper class in the late 18th century. The first British traveller to describe its benefits was the novelist Tobias Smollett, who visited Nice in 1763 when it was still an Italian city within the Kingdom of Sardinia. Smollett brought Nice and its warm winter climate to the attention of the British aristocracy with Travels through France and Italy, written in 1765. At about the same time, a Scottish doctor, John Brown, became famous for prescribing what he called climato-therapy, a change in climate, to cure a variety of diseases including tuberculosis, known then as consumption. The French historian Paul Gonnet wrote that, as a result, Nice was filled with "a colony of pale and listless English women and listless sons of nobility near death".